Justin H. Vassallo is a freelance writer who specializes in political parties and coalitions, political economy, American development, and modern Europe.
Recent decades of brutal deindustrialization have helped lead many liberals to rethink their trust in the market as the arbiter of which jobs should exist. But without an organized working class, a turn toward industrial policy can’t improve the lives of the majority.
Tim Ryan understands that decades of neoliberal policies have been disastrous. But his solutions to that disaster leave much to be desired.
Since Donald Trump’s presidency, both Democrats and Republicans have begun to openly criticize globalization. Although these concerns have often been combined with xenophobic nationalism, the Left should not cede the debate on trade policy to the Right.
In 1992, Bill Clinton ran for president promising to “end welfare as we know it.” This rightward turn was part of a broader attempt by the Democrats to craft a “progressive neoliberalism” — whose “progressivism” included abandoning its working-class base.
Some right-wing populists are making a bid to outflank the Democrats on industrial policy as part of their attempt to make the Republicans into a “workers’ party.” The best way to defeat them is to make the Green New Deal the centerpiece of progressive twenty-first-century industrial policy.